


The Thinking Man

by PresquePommes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Emotional Conflict, Gift Drabble, Levi Takes a Dump, M/M, That is the best tag I have ever had the pleasure of writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shamelessly self-indulgent gift drabble for Blake, author of It's Funny Because Eren Can't Read, for their incredible gift to the Eren/Levi ship and for actually laughing at my stupid jokes about it on a daily basis. </p><p>Takes place behind the scenes of Chapter Eleven, during Levi's notably extensive time spent on the crapper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thinking Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlakeBroflovski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlakeBroflovski/gifts).
  * Inspired by [It's Funny Because Eren Can't Read](https://archiveofourown.org/works/983204) by [BlakeBroflovski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlakeBroflovski/pseuds/BlakeBroflovski). 



> I have no regrets.

You’re a fucking mess, and you know it.

You’d like to say that he’s made a mess of you. You really would. Everything would be so much easier if you could say without hesitation that it’s all his fault, if you could just be done with it, if you could wash your hands of the responsibility of not giving into irresponsibility better suited to him than a man of your age, let alone a man of your standing.

You would absolutely love to push the blame onto a fifteen-year-old boy who admires and idolizes you so zealously that his eyes sometimes take on the look of a Wall Cult member during choir- there’s an unsettling piety in the way he looks at you, even now, after everything he’s seen of you, after everything you’ve said and done. You’d love to vilify him for his transparency, this kid who wants you with all the subtlety of the titans who _don’t_ have teenagers riding inside of them and all the native fire of the one who does.

You’d pay good money to believe that his eyes are still drawn to linger on you by purely worshipful feelings.

You want to believe that you’re still just his hero, that he doesn’t see anything beyond the figure of you that Erwin has painstakingly painted into the eyes of his people- that he looks at you and sees someone better than you.

Someone purer than you.

Someone taller than you.

But you also don’t want to believe that, even as you do, and you know that it isn’t true, regardless of what you do and don’t want to believe.

He sees something when he looks at you, and you know that beyond any doubt, because you see it reflecting back at you in his changed expressions, read it in the way his eyes follow you as if transfixed by your slightest movement, read it in the lines of his body as they reorient towards you when you enter his view.

He focuses on you with every part of himself, and you’ve made a fucking mess of yourself over whether or not you’re okay with that.

There are reasons that you are. There are reasons that you shouldn’t be.

All the while, you keep telling yourself that you’re too old to play this game in the first place.

You were always smart, even when you weren’t the kind of smart that the people you associated with considered the baseline measurement of human intelligence, but now you’re that, too.

And if people who were supposed to be smarter than you found a younger, dumber you hard to fool back then, an older you certainly isn’t going to have much luck trying to fool himself now.

You’re too old and too shrewd to play this game.

But you’re still going to play it, and you know it.

You’re going to pretend that you’re not encouraging him, pretend that you don’t know exactly how attuned to the subtleties of your body language and facial expressions his eyes have become in so short a time, and you’re going to tell yourself that you have nothing to do with whether or not he does what you’re pretending not to hope that he’ll do, because then it doesn’t have to be your responsibility when it happens.

You’ll know that you’re full of shit, but he won’t, so you’ll do it anyway and hope his believing in your innocence somehow excuses your guilt.

As you sit and stare at the bathroom floor, nothing to occupy you but your reluctant bowels and your equally congested brain, you feel the urge to rub your hands over your face in an attempt to stop it from repeating the steps of a dance with which you’re all too familiar.

But you don’t, because you don’t trust yourself not to take issue with the action right now, given where you are and what you’re doing, and the last thing you need is to score another rule in your rulebook, especially not one having to do with where and how you can and cannot touch your own body.

So you let your expressions run their course, feel them cross and uncross over you, six beats of undeserved resentment here and four beats of pre-emptive guilt there, a dip, a bow, two beats of longing and only one beat of doubt. The lack of symmetry in your own feelings bothers you.

You’d think you’d have the grace to be more undecided about the whole goddamn thing, but even as you’re telling yourself that you won’t encourage him, your thoughts are stuck on the rhythm of dancing.

You have a sudden urge to listen to music. To old music.

You eye the second note, still unfolded, where it lingers under the fast-drying nib of your pen, and feel a strange little smile waltz across your lips as you draw up a third.

You’re a mess, but he doesn’t have to know that, because your penmanship certainly isn’t.

And for all his bright-eyed vigilance, you doubt he’ll see anything amiss in the precise lettering of the one who taught him to read.


End file.
